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Alexgopen

[Rebalance] Valrei is biased toward Magranon

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I've done some testing lately and have come to the conclusion that Valrei is highly imbalanced in favor of Magranon.  Read on for an explanation.

 

This imbalance can be attributed to 3 major factors

 

1. Layout of the map's Buff/Trap/Slow tiles:

The valrei map's special tiles are not very evenly distributed.  For example, Fo and Libila are both pretty well boxed in by trap/slow/hostile tiles, while Magranon starts right next to a strength tile to start off scenarios with a significant buff.

clnb9GQ.jpg

 

 

2. Imbalanced edge crossing connections:

I checked the Wurm Unlimited code to determine all of the possible edge crossing connections.  To my surprise, a lot of them were 1-way only.  After drawing all of the connections, it became apparent that Magranon has a much wider range of connected tiles that he can access from his edge of the map, as compared to either Fo or Libila.

g6U0aha.png

 

The result of this wider spread of edge crossings is that Magranon can access more tiles in fewer moves than either Libila or Fo.

q1r8Qa4.png

 

 

3. Imbalanced deity characteristics in the new combat system:

The starting stats for the 3 main gods are imbalanced, highly in favor of Magranon.  This was very easy to test, as the Wurm Unlimited code has a method for simulating fights between gods for testing purposes.  By simulating 1,000,000 fights between Lib v Mag, Lib v Fo, and Fo v Mag, I was able to see that Libila and Fo are fairly evenly balanced, but Magranon is stronger than both Libila and Fo and has a win rate of about 60:40 or better versus either of these gods.

 

1000000 fights completed between Libila and Magranon.
Libila won 39.1482% of fights, Magranon won the remaining 60.8518%.
1000000 fights completed between Magranon and Libila.
Magranon won 60.8139% of fights, Libila won the remaining 39.1861%.

 

1000000 fights completed between Libila and Fo.
Libila won 50.782% of fights, Fo won the remaining 49.218%.
1000000 fights completed between Fo and Libila.
Fo won 49.6064% of fights, Libila won the remaining 50.3936%.

 

1000000 fights completed between Fo and Magranon.
Fo won 37.014% of fights, Magranon won the remaining 62.986%.
1000000 fights completed between Magranon and Fo.
Magranon won 63.1285% of fights, Fo won the remaining 36.8715%.

 

 

In summary, Valrei is in dire need of rebalancing. 

The map layout and edge crossings favor Magranon.  This could partially explain why historically MR/Magranon won valrei most often.

With the addition of the new deity stats and combat system, Valrei has become even further imbalanced in favor of Magranon.

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36 minutes ago, Alexgopen said:

This could partially explain why historically MR/Magranon won valrei most often.

 

I don't think so, historically MR has had a lot of mission spammers/leechers so missions would get spammed to hell and assuming someone that understood valrei was around and wanted to use their karma, Mag got sent the right way while jk and bl never really bothered or understood valrei.  Judging by certain jkh players that joined mrh a long while back, they still don't even understand it despite people explaining.  99% of mr has either quit or gone to freedom, which is why Mag has only won once so far in the last 6 months with a second probably very soon, only because the collectable spawn favored Mag this time.  Me and Pidgeoni mapped valrei by watching gods move and where commune can send mag to find the warp paths, if the map really gives Mag more tiles to get to faster, no one has noticed before.

 

With the addition of slower and faster move timers based on difficulty of missions, I think at the very least we can remove the slow tiles as they hardly add any flavor to the map.  At that point it then becomes a trap next to Mag, a trap next to Lib, and a trap 2 tiles from Fo.  Maybe traps should just be removed too, and give every tile a low random chance to hurt a god as they leave.  Maybe it took some strength away because it was a hard tile to traverse, or stamina because it took longer, dunno do some weird roleplay stuff but display a message in valrei twitter for it so people understand what's happening.  Maybe add a recap of events as a logger in the ingame valrei map instead of actually needing to use a 3rd party thing like twitter.

 

Buffs and stats... dunno where to start with them, they've almost never been properly balanced.  Like the time Lib had unkillable stats, or Nathan/Smeagain/Gary having unkillable stats, think even Wurm was unkillable at one point too.  Imo buffing should be done by doing missions and winning scenarios not tiles, with a limit to how far a diety can be buffed to prevent the old scenarios where a god would end up with 12 str and 12 vitality or something silly.  As far as stats go... I don't know why they are different, making them different will always mean something is unfair one way or another.  Going from 2 stats to however many it is now probably doesn't help either, idk what any of them do but it's probably in patch notes somewhere.  The 3 gods should have the same stats, and again that moves around by the players actual interactions via missions and scenarios

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A well-written post with some seemingly good maths behind it. This is definitely worth looking into.
Regarding whether or not this is related to MR winning scenarios in the past - whatever. Make the game board balanced, please.

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Bump for balance. At least do something - either with the characteristics or the board itself.

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Heh, I knew there will be a post after fight with Libila.

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On the Lib side, Affliction has fairly easy access to both Desertion and Serenity, which helps with missions. To do any Fo missions on Desertion, however, I'd have to sail across Elevation (or take a "shortcut" across the north of Affliction).

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5 hours ago, Wilczan said:

Heh, I knew there will be a post after fight with Libila.

This has rebalance suggestion has nothing to do with the current scenario - although yes, it's another example of Magranon winning a fight despite odds should've been stacked against him afaic.
 

 

3 hours ago, Roccandil said:

On the Lib side, Affliction has fairly easy access to both Desertion and Serenity, which helps with missions. To do any Fo missions on Desertion, however, I'd have to sail across Elevation (or take a "shortcut" across the north of Affliction).

You can still sail through the northern part of Affliction if you want a shortcut. It doesn't have anything to do with this rebalance suggestion

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36 minutes ago, John said:

You can still sail through the northern part of Affliction if you want a shortcut. It doesn't have anything to do with this rebalance suggestion

 

This thread is about how the Valrei scenarios are biased toward Mag, so any factor that uniquely favors Lib would seem relevant.

 

The only factor I see that favors Fo is that Vyn is a powerful, incorruptible (I assume) ally of Fo. Since Vyn doesn't move, though, she mostly only matters if items spawn on her hex.

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Actually, Vyn isn't incorruptible; Mag just swayed her to his side, so as far as I can see, Fo has no unique advantages at all.

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Was gonna make my own thread but found this one.  Fo's name also doesn't show up when you hover over Fo in the valrei map.

 

Bumping

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On 4/30/2018 at 8:38 PM, MrGARY said:

I don't think so, historically MR has had a lot of mission spammers/leechers so missions would get spammed to hell and assuming someone that understood valrei was around and wanted to use their karma, Mag got sent the right way while jk and bl never really bothered or understood valrei.

Can confirm that. As a former "mission ######" I can say some of us were turbo nerding missions like crazy. A lot of people from MR got explanations on how the map work, how to guide gods, what tiles to avoid, etc. I even recall people making alts on desertion to guide mag the wrong way so he'd lose scenarios. 

 

I do have to admit that I don't like the Valrei Map and the way it's organized. Not sure if Mag has a buff or not, can't confirm or disprove the math regarding Mag winning more often. 

 

Valrei is just another RNG fest mechanic that can at any point favor any god or another. Libila or Fo can start with 1 item near them required to win and it's going to be a 8 hour scenario if people guide their gods and spam some missions. Or a kingdom can get lucky and get 10 easy missions in a row like cut down a tree, sac 300 ropes, cut down another tree, donate 5 items to an avatar, sac 300 decent carving knives (carving knives can come out even at 90 ql on creation), etc. 

 

I agree some rebalancing needs to be done. The issue for me is that a lot of systems in wurm are at their core just RNG fests that often times don't even factor skill in determining outcome, see previous example. 

 

But to be completely honest at this point...if Valrei is just one of those "Epic" things, let's face it, no one is gonna do a rebalance and redesign for those two dozen people still playing there. Not unless you want to bring Valrei to freedom in some form or another, in which case, it will be a different kettle of fish. 

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Does Mag even fight FO? last i checked (  a long while back) they were friendly buddies stealing items from each other without any fight - first to leave the tile claimed them

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Someone told me today that a ninja patch a couple months back made then enemies again. 

 

Guess we'll find out in a few hours @Skatyna

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Mhhm? Fo just spawned with an item north of him. It's literally a 2 move win. Is valrei now biased towards fo? 

 

Or is just RNG like everything in wurm?

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On 9/27/2022 at 10:36 AM, elentari said:

Mhhm? Fo just spawned with an item north of him. It's literally a 2 move win. Is valrei now biased towards fo? 

 

Or is just RNG like everything in wurm?


Do the tiles RNG every scenario? No.
Is body strength RNG every scenario? No. Mag starts with +10bs at the start of the server.

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